


Epitaph

by knittedace



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Awkward Zuko, Discussions of death, Friendship, Funeral Customs, Gen, Making Friends, Western Air Temple, Worldbuilding, Zuko POV, a happier story than it sounds from the tags, discussions of Genocide, just to be clear there is no character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:17:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knittedace/pseuds/knittedace
Summary: While searching for any trace of the Avatar, Zuko found something at the Western Air Temple.Now they’re no longer enemies, Zuko thinks Aang needs to see it.





	Epitaph

‘So, Aang’s been acting kind of weird,’ Zuko said, as soon as he and Sokka were far enough away from the others.

‘He’s _Aang_.’ Sokka frowned, bending to pick up a stick for firewood.

‘Yeah, but... weird for Aang? He keeps going all quiet and... thoughtful.’ Which sounded stupid and made him regret even asking. Sokka would probably just give him a look and tell him he was being an idiot. After all, Zuko and Aang had been enemies until three days ago. How could Zuko know what was normal for Aang?

But something _felt_ wrong with Aang, and he’d figured only Katara, Toph and Sokka knew him well enough to ask about it. He couldn’t ask Katara; she hated him. Toph seemed to liked him (or maybe she just liked ordering him around, even though her feet were fine now) but he didn’t think she was the right person to ask about someone’s feelings. Which left Sokka who hadn’t exactly been _friendly_ , but hadn’t been unfriendly either. And now he’d messed it up.

‘Oh, that. I know what you mean,’ Sokka said - so maybe it _wasn’t_ a stupid thing to ask. ‘He’s been like that at every Air Temple we’ve visited. Well, he went to the Eastern one on his own so I don’t know how he reacted there. But it’s not surprising.’ Sokka waved his free arm at the empty forest, gesturing as though he were trying to take in the entire Air Temple in the cliffside behind them. ‘Everyone’s _gone_.’

‘Yeah. That makes sense.’

‘At least there aren’t any bodies here,’ Sokka said, his voice taking on something of a dark edge. ‘We found some at the Southern Temple.’

He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. Zuko’s heart froze, and he covered his reaction by bending down to pick up a few sticks. He and Uncle had found bodies there too. It had been their first stop after the Agni Kai, his face still wrapped in bandages and hurting so much he couldn’t think straight. Uncle had insisted on treating the skeletons respectfully, putting the skulls in the ossuary filled with centuries of dusty remains, and the rest of the bones - Zuko didn’t know what he’d done with the rest of the bones.  He’d been too annoyed at Uncle for wasting time.

They might have been people Aang knew. His friends, or his teachers. Uncle had wanted to stay a few days to ensure all the dead were taken care of, but Zuko had insisted they carry on to the next Air Temple. And a few years later, Aang had come back there and found _more_ skeletons, abandoned where they died.

The words _I’m sorry_ came to his lips, but he swallowed them back down. Sokka wouldn’t know what he was apologising for, and Zuko didn’t want to explain. Sokka didn’t need more reasons to think badly of him.

They walked on in silence.

*

The problem ran through his mind in circles all evening. He slept and woke in the morning with the same thoughts, same answers. At least he had firebending training first thing, and the physical exertion and the effort of keeping Aang attentive stopped him getting distracted for a while.

But when they finished, Aang thanked him with a smile that was less genuine than ones he’d given Zuko while they were actually _enemies._ That was enough. He gave up overthinking things and blurted out, ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

‘Oh? I thought we were done with training.’

‘It’s not about firebending. It’s something in the temple. When I was - well, when I was trying to find you, when you were still frozen, I searched all the Air Temples.’ He paused a moment, expecting Aang to be angry that he’d dared to go through the places his people had lived. Aang just looked curious. He went on. ‘I found something at the bottom of the canyon. I - I think you might like to see it.’

Fortunately Aang didn’t ask him what it was, since Zuko expected he’d mess it up if he tried to explain. They went to Appa, who had just finished his breakfast, and he flew them down to the canyon floor. Aang could have flown down alone, but Zuko didn’t really want him to go by himself. Not that Zuko was the best person to be there, if Aang was upset by it. Maybe he should have told Sokka and let him take care of it?

Too late now.

A small river struggled along the canyon floor, with a few shrubs surviving near its banks. The sun had only risen a few hours ago, so it barely slanted over the edge of the canyon walls, throwing everything below into sharp shadow. Glancing up was as disorienting as Zuko remembered; the upside-down temple, its foundations seeming to be the sky itself - making Zuko feel like was the one who was upside-down, about to plummet head-first into it.

‘This way,’ he said, tearing his gaze away from the sky, and led Aang towards the place he remembered. It was in the shadow of the canyon walls, right underneath the temple and partially hidden by an overhang, so it hadn’t been visible on their way down. The rocky ground gave way to a flat, smooth area of stone, almost as big as the throne room back home. It was raised just a few inches above the rest of the ground, and there was something carved in it, half-obscured by dust. Aang cleared the stone with a wave of one hand, revealing the words:

 

HERE LIE  
725 ADULTS  
AND  
114 CHILDREN  
FROM THE WESTERN AIR TEMPLE  
MURDERED IN THE  
FIRE NATION GENOCIDE

 

Aang knelt at the edge of the stone, bowing his head, and Zuko - Zuko froze. What was he supposed to say? What _could_ he say - he was Fire Nation. His great-grandfather had ordered this. ‘Are - are you okay?’ he asked. ‘I thought you might want to see...’

Aang was silent for a few moments longer. ‘It must have been the Earthbenders,’ he said eventually, and it didn’t sound like he was crying.

‘The - what?’

‘I only came here a few times,’ Aang said, glancing up at him. It made him awkwardly aware he was towering over Aang, so he knelt beside him, careful not to touch either Aang or the stone. Aang’s face held the soft, sad expression he’d been wearing so often while they’d been at the temple. At least he didn’t look angry. ‘But I remember there was an Earth Kingdom village nearby. We used to trade. They must have done this, afterwards.’ It sounded right. Certainly only an Earthbender could have made a stone this size to mark the grave. So many people dead. It must have taken _ages_ , for their neighbours to find them all and carry them down here. And some of those bodies would have been people they knew and cared for. Friends.

Zuko hadn’t thought about any of that the first time he was here. He’d just taken offence at the words on the stone. Because he’d been stupid, believed everything his father and his tutors had told him about the beginning of the war. He’d been angry that the stone used the words _murder_ and _genocide_ , when he’d been taught it had been a glorious military victory. He’d been angry that the stone claimed children were killed, because Fire Nation soldiers would never kill innocents. He’d wanted to destroy it.

Fortunately Uncle Iroh had stopped him, had gone on at him about desecrating the resting place of the dead until he’d given in just to get him to stop talking about it. One more thing Zuko would never be able to repay him for. He felt so ashamed, thinking back on it now, but at least Uncle had prevented him doing the unforgivable.

There was no way he was confessing that to Aang. He fumbled for something else to say, and came out with, ‘Uncle tried to take care of the remains we found. Um, in the Southern Air Temple. We didn’t find any at the others. He put the skulls in these shelves full of other skulls, like where some people keep ashes in the Fire Nation. I - I hope that was the right thing to do.’

Aang smiled, a genuine one that met his eyes, even if it wasn’t as bright as his usual smiles. ‘I’m glad. And yeah, that was the right thing to do. We didn’t bury people, like they do in the Earth Kingdom.’

‘What did you do? If it’s okay to ask.’ Zuko had heard stories in his lessons, mostly when his tutors were trying to interest a bored prince in history by telling him all the gory bits. They’d claimed that the Air Nomads were so barbaric they threw their dead away with the rest of their waste, that corpses lay around in the sun and were eaten by wild animals.

Which obviously wasn’t true, as the rows and rows of honourably preserved skulls showed. Something he’d been too stupid to question when he’d first travelled to the Air Temples.

‘We called it a sky-burial. We’d leave the bodies of the dead somewhere high up in the temples - each one had a specific place dedicated to it, I’m not sure where it was for this one. Anyway, the carrion-birds would land there and eat all the flesh off the bones, and when they were done, we put the skull in the ossuary. The other bones got ground up and mixed with stuff to feed the smaller birds.’

Okay, so the propaganda wasn’t _entirely_ made up. Zuko really hoped his disgust wasn’t showing on his face. The weirdest thing was Aang talking about it like it was normal - as though he wasn’t describing people being fed to the birds like kitchen leftovers.

He probably shouldn’t say that over the grave of hundreds of murdered Air Nomads. ‘That sounds... interesting?’

‘Everyone from the other Nations thinks it’s gross too,’ Aang said cheerfully. ‘Even before the war. I told Bumi in the middle of dinner and he nearly threw up! Besides, as I see it, _you’re_ the weird ones.’

‘We are?’ Zuko asked, giving him a disbelieving look. What could possibly be weird about cremation? It was quick and clean and dignified. A burst of intense fire, and then you were ash. ‘Why?’

‘The monks taught me that everything’s connected. Plants take their nourishment from the earth. Animals eat the plants, and sometimes other animals eat them too. And when the animals die, their bodies go back into the earth and become food so that more plants can grow. It’s a cycle.’ Zuko nodded; that reminded him of all the spiritual harmony and balance stuff Uncle used to talk about. He wished he’d listened to Uncle more while he still had the chance.

‘And humans are a part of that,’ Aang went on. ‘The Earth Kingdom bury their dead in the ground, so their remains help feed the plants and the worms and other underground things. The Water Tribes bury their dead at sea, so they get eaten by the fish and the sea creatures. And we have the birds.’

The sky burial thing made more sense when he put it that way - although Water and Earth customs at least had the benefit of not having to _see_ the dead people getting eaten. ‘So why’s Fire the odd one out?’

‘You just burn your dead up and put them in jars. They don’t go back into the cycle.’

‘Well... we don’t have any fire-creatures to eat our dead. Except the dragons, but I don’t think they want to eat human corpses…’ Zuko said, making a face.

‘Yeah. I guess not. Still, it means you’re the weird ones.’

Zuko might have argued with that, but it didn’t seem appropriate. ‘Alright,’ he said, and they settled back into silence, more comfortably this time. Zuko watched as Aang laid a hand flat on the stone. ‘Do you mind? That the Earthbenders buried them, instead of doing the sky burial thing?’

Aang shook his head. ‘No. They did the best they could. I think... I think what matters isn’t the exact details of what you do with the dead. What matters is that someone cares enough to do _something_.’

‘I get what you mean,’ he said, remembering Uncle’s hands setting tiny skulls into their resting places, attentive and gentle. Back then, all he’d seen was a waste of time.

Aang hugged him, a sudden heavy weight against his side, head resting against his shoulder. ‘Thanks for showing me this,’ he said. ‘It helps.’

Zuko settled his arm around Aang, hand resting lightly on his friend’s back. ‘I’m glad.’

They stayed like that a while longer, while Aang sat quietly by the grave and thought whatever he needed to think. When they left on Appa, Aang was smiling, and Zuko didn’t see him look quiet or sad again for the rest of the day. He still had no idea what he was doing, with these people who’d once been his enemies and now might be becoming friends, but maybe he wasn’t so bad at being good after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Sky burial has been practised by a number of different cultures - the version I came up with here borrows elements from a few different places. I’m not sure where I came up with the headcanon of element-appropriate funeral customs, so if I accidentally borrowed it form anyone, thanks and apologies. And thanks to everyone for reading - I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
